Please pass on to Port St Lucie voters on your contact list: Making the case for JoAnn Faiella I am writing to you today because you are the informed voters, you know the issues, you follow the news. And I’m guessing your friends and family look to you for direction at election time, as mine look towards me. The mayor’s race in Port St Lucie has no registered Republican running in it. It is a non-partisan race where those running do not disclose their political party. One is a registered Independent and one is a registered Democrat. If you’re thinking that you should be leaning towards the independent as the better choice I writing to tell you that you would be wrong. I’m writing because I know that JoAnn Faiella is the far better candidate and has served the city and its people well. Some of you might live outside the city limits and feel that this race doesn’t involve you. It does, what happens in PSL affects the rest of the county. Some of you already support JoAnn but might not know how to communicate that support to your friends, this might help. Allow yourself to get past political party here because you’ll see that her views and actions align very closely to yours. If you’re a conservative you find yourself on the opposite side of the liberal-progressive that believes in larger government, more regulation, higher taxes, more control of your daily life. JoAnn is none of that. (Let’s not kid ourselves, progressives can be found in ample numbers in the Republican Party as well.) In fact she’s arguably more conservative than many of own Republicans. Certainly she was attacked when she first got into office. These were nothing more than tactics by her enemies. No different than the lawsuits against Scott Walker of Wisconsin, Rick Perry of Texas, and the unending stream of lawsuits that ultimately drove Sarah Palin from office because she couldn’t afford to fight them all. I’m not comparing JoAnn to those three or those three to each other. I’m just looking at the tactics. When JoAnn beat Chris Cooper 4 years ago she broke the chain of succession. Minski to Christensen, to Cooper, to Berger. She upset the applecart and the insiders weren’t happy. I didn’t start out as a Faiella supporter. It had more to do with party affiliation than anything else. After being in many of the same rooms, and hearing what she has to say, her views and her votes, I liked what I heard. Early on was the Ravenswood Community Center. The city building dept. wanted to serve as general contractor. Faiella was against it. She said the city had never finished a project on time or on budget, and there is no recourse as you would have with a private contractor. For years the City has wanted to open a clinic for their employees, thinking it will save money. JoAnn is against it, “we have a hospital to the east, one to the west, and one north of us. There are doctor’s offices and clinics all over. We provide health insurance for our employees, let them figure it out. The City does not need to be doctors, this is not what we should be doing.” She also understands the medical liability that would exist could wipe out any savings tenfold in a heartbeat. We know that things a government does rarely save the money touted and once done rarely gets undone. Taxes: It would have been easy to raise taxes to cover the loss of revenue when our property values dropped. JoAnn voted NO. I’m not talking just this year, an election year, but every year. She has never voted to raise taxes. (The only person to vote to raise taxes this year was Michelle Berger, the only registered Republican on the Council. Her reasoning, as reported in the paper, “it is what staff suggested”. Michelle strongly supports Oravec, who was a member of “staff”. I’ll leave you to make the conclusion as to what might happen in the future if Oravec is elected.) Digital Domain: This horrible deal was done before Faiella got into office. She never said, “this is all Bush’s fault.” (You know what I mean) And when it came time to vote on refinancing the debt held on the building and land she voted NO. It was a difficult position to take being that everyone was crying about our credit rating. She understood that it was better to cut our losses, give the building and land to the investors, let them sell it off and not pledge valuable tax receipts to pay off empty debt with the promise of low interest payments today and higher payments in years to come. Refinancing is nothing more than kicking the can down the road. She made the right choice but unfortunately was out voted 2-3. Shockingly the only person with banking experience on the Council didn’t see the situation with the clarity that JoAnn did. All Aboard Florida. She’s against it. Seven-50. She voted to withdraw from it. She knows that down the road it will pop its head up again under a different name. Private property rights. She’s a defender of them. Rehab or Sober Homes, “There’s a place in the city for them, but quiet residential neighborhoods are not the right place.” When others on the council said there was nothing that could be done, Faiella went to Tallahassee, and she went to Washington DC. She is an advocate of the people, fighting for our communities and property values. When a proposal came before council to spend $100,000 to lease Christmas lights for St Lucie West Blvd. JoAnn voted NO. “Call me the Grinch but we can’t afford it. How can I tell those down on PSL Blvd you’re not getting lights but your taxes will pay for lights up on SLW Blvd?” She’s against the growth of government for the sake of growing of government and asks herself “how does this benefit the individual citizen or business” before making any vote as a member of the Council. She favors school choice and believes in charter schools. She was endorsed by Brian Longworth’s Pro-Life Pac, and responded highly favorably to the Christian Coalition’s questionnaire. Oravec chose not to respond. She understands the role of government. The list goes on…. She is a conservative, and she doesn’t take these positions because she was told to. Not because it would endear her to the conservative wing of her party in order to be elected. So that once elected she can pivot to the left like so many Republicans have done. She takes these positions because this is what she believes in. When you tell her that she is in the wrong party she laughs and says, “Yeah, I hear that all the time.” Now on to her opponent. Oravec quit the cities employ 3 times. One time he cashed out his 401K and was rehired 5 days later. No other employee anywhere would have been able to do such. The other two times he didn’t get his way. You really don’t need to go much further to see his character. You don’t want a quitter as mayor, someone who is quick to act out and ill tempered. Speaking of quitting, looking at Oravec’s resume he held 8 jobs in 11 years before joining the city as assistant city manager. While there were 1 or 2 promotions, most were not. Gregg is about Gregg, he’s not about the job he holds. He was head of the CRA and oversaw the City Center project. Land was sold to a developer who quickly went bust. From what I understand he also was a consultant to that same developer. Now the ownership and taxes are a tangled mess. After heading the CRA he went to work for Culpepper Terpening, the county’s largest civil engineering firm that regularly contracts with the city on projects. After 2 years there he came back to the City as Asst. City Manager, hired by Don Cooper, who eventually left to work for…….. wait for it…. Culpepper Terpening. I know that this is a small town but it is big enough that the office of the city manager doesn’t have to sleep in the same bed as the developers and builders. Oravec owns a property development consulting firm. Who exactly will he be working for if elected? City Hall was a circus of building and expansion and bloated budgets all at the expense of the taxpayers. Electing Oravec will take us right back to that. Now, when he’s not spreading lies about Faiella, he campaigns on building sidewalks, lowering taxes, and reducing our debt. So he’s going to lower taxes, payoff the debt, and build 100’s of miles of sidewalk at $1 million per mile. What kind of Common Core math is this? The last time I heard promises like that it was “if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” and “Obamacare won’t raise the debt one single dime.” He doesn’t work well with others. I’ve had the opportunity to speak with people who have worked with Oravec before. I heard a common thread. If you’ve ever worked with or for Gregg, you’ll vote for Faiella. That’s it. Your decision should be a simple one. Get past what is on a voter registration card and look at the facts. When you realize that voting for Faiella is the right decision then tell your family, friends and neighbors too. The prior administrations gave us City Center, the Civic Center, and Digital Domain and the debt and problems that came with it. We can’t afford to go back to being the ATM machine for an out of control City Hall. If you know me you know that I write from the heart and about things I’m passionate about. I’m pragmatic and know we live in an imperfect world inhabited by imperfect beings. This local election is very, very important to the future of the city. I urge you to vocally support and vote for JoAnn Faiella for Mayor of Port St. Lucie. Feel free to pass this along. Always free to talk, Michael Loeb 772-579-5001
Posted on: Sun, 26 Oct 2014 13:31:56 +0000
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